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These Times History Took a Turn for the Batty

Khalid Elhassan November 3, 2019 34 min

Battle of the Severn. In Red Coat Rags Attired

11. The English Civil War’s Final Battle Was Fought in Maryland

The Battle of the Severn came about when Maryland’s governor, sworn to the colony’s royalist Catholic Lord Baltimore, sailed with a small militia to the Puritan settlement of Providence – today’s Annapolis. His goal: surprise the region’s Puritans, and compel them to swear allegiance to Lord Baltimore. Unfortunately for the governor, things did not work out as he had planned.

Instead of surprising the Puritans of Providence, the governor and his men were surprised on March 25^th, 1655, when the Puritans unexpectedly attacked them from the rear and routed them. By the time it was over, the governor’s militia had lost 49 men, while the Puritans lost only 2. The engagement holds the distinction of being the last battle fought in the English Civil War.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.